Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!] Analysis

Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our...

Free VerseAlmost all of Frank O'Hara's poems are written in free verse, meaning that they have no rhyme scheme and no formal meter. So, what makes an O'Hara poem an O'Hara poem?Poetry critics have...

This is a pretty short poem, so we don't get to know tons about the speaker. This is what we do know: he gets into petty arguments with loved ones, he's "acted perfectly disgraceful[ly]" at parties...

While the poem doesn't ever reference New York explicitly, we're pretty sure it takes place on the streets of Manhattan. O'Hara was a mostly autobiographical poet, and he wrote a lot about his dail...

This poem is written in pretty free free verse, so there's no rhyme or meter to keep it chugging along. There's almost no punctuation in the poem either, so reading it out loud might make you lose...

Because Frank O'Hara called a whole lot of his poems "Poem," most people refer to this one by its first line: "Lana Turner has collapsed!" We don't know why he didn't give it a more interesting tit...

"I do this, I do that" O'Hara was known for his "I do this, I do that" poems. (Really – that's what the critics call them.) He's famous for poems that catalogue his daily activities – walking d...

(3) Base CampThis poem isn't too difficult to understand on a basic level. The speaker is walking around when he learns that Lana Turner has collapsed. He wants her to get up. No biggie. But it can...

Lana Turner wasn't always named Lana Turner. She was born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner. Good thing she dropped the "Mildred" (source).Frank O'Hara's college roommate was Edward Gorey, the writ...

GWhile there may be a little innuendo going on in this poem (what kind of disgraceful things did you actually do at those parties, Frank?) the poem itself is pretty much G-rated. But if you're look...